>For me it is not so much an issue of reconciling Genesis with
>evolutionary theory as trying to reconcile the existence of
>supernatural/revealed knowledge with our natural/experential
>knowledge. I'm a biochemist by training. I can explain in physical
>terms what happens when digitonin is added to cholesterol and a white
>precipitate appears. Now if I start trying to incorporate our
>supernatural God, anything can happen. Yet typically it does not.
>How come? Where are the miracles? Are they indeed as suggested the
>physical laws to which we have become accustomed? This is a much
>bigger issue for me rather than trying to match two different
>creation stories in Genesis with evolution. The creating/living God
>exists now. I have experienced Him. How does this
>spiritual/revealed knowledge jive with what I can explain in my test
>tube?
I was trained as a physical chemist, and I, too, am yet to see a
violation of natural processes. However, the gospels certainly record
such violations. So I am not too troubled about reconciling
the existence of supernatural/revealed knowledge. I know it exists.
I'm more focused on reconciling that knowledge with natural/experiential
knowledge in an artistic synthetic fashion.
I am interested in Genesis and the evolutionary record because every
worldview contains answers to four questions: Where did our natural
world come from? Where did humans come from? What went wrong (with humans)?
What is the cure? Certainly, the pernicious -isms of our century
answer the first two questions with the word "evolve". So if you show
that the two Genesis Creation Stories somehow "image" the evolutionary
record - and visa versa - then you show that scientific and Judeo-Christian
origin stories are not mutually exclusive - but paradoxically speaking
with one another across the void.
I don't know whether that makes much sense. But I think that Christians
might discover great beauty in an aesthetic comparison between these
very different origin stories.
J. Raymond Zimmer